Monthly Archives: December 2017

Hearty congratulations are due to SMUG, (Sexual Minorities Uganda) who were one of the 37 LGBT and ally groups represented at the 2nd Assembly in Munich last week of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics (GNRC). For some time now, I’ve been following their twitter feed, and have been thoroughly impressed by the work they are doing, towards protecting LGBT and other sexual minorities in Uganda.

They’ve been awarded the 2017 René Cassin Human Rights Prize, for their work. The judges’ committee drew attention to the problem of criminalisation not only in Uganda, but also in other countries, and the importance of opposing it. This is of course, a primary focus of the GNRC, too. One of the working groups at the 2nd Assembly was devoted to the problem of criminalisation, with strong representation from the African countries present. At the business part of the meeting later, the assembly formally approved a motion urging the Catholic Church to oppose the scourge of criminalisation in African It is wonderful timing that in the week after our conference approved that resolution, one of our member groups has been honoured for their work to that end.

For more, see this Spanish language report (I’ve not yet found any English reports. Until I do, I’m dependent as ever on Google translate for the bare bones of the story):

Under the biblical motto “Hear a Just Cause” (Psalm 17,1), almost 100 Rainbow Catholics from 35 countries gathered in Munich-Dachau from November 30th to December 3rd, 2017, in order to develop a common agenda for the future.

A special focus of the assembly was on the African region, where legal criminalisation in some countries and social persecution in others lead to conditions where LGBTIQ people in many African countries are endangered in their everyday lives. One of several working groups convened during the assembly focused specifically on this issue of criminalisation.